United States

TicToc by Bloomberg – a new TV channel on Twitter – is kind of like Euronews. Lots of automated clips. I can see it being useful in supermarket queues, though also useful is a complex thing called “reading”.

United Kingdom

UK radio is being deregulated – David Lloyd looks at what it might mean, and John Myers has a go too. In short: no more music format regulation, news will be quite tightly regulated, no requirement for local programming, old AM/FM licences can be handed back if you don’t want them and they won’t be re-advertised, DAB multiplexes has no regulatory requirement for approval of changes. Much of this isn’t too different to where we are now, it seems to me – great swathes of output is networked anyway, and DAB multiplexes could change anything they wanted just by asking. That said, I’m pleased to see the AM/FM licence non-re-advertising thing, since I’ve been calling for that for some time.

Just in time for Christmas, the Global Player, from the UK’s largest commercial radio group, is now available (fittingly, globally) on Android devices.

Interesting blog post from the BBC who are going https. Particularly, mobile networks fiddle with data sent in http and break things (one of the reasons I went https a while back – I found one coffee shop adding ads on the top of my own website!).

If you’re wanting a free and really very beautiful game to play over the holidays on your Android phone, I’d recommend Datawing. Really good, simple, and even idiots like me can complete it.

An interesting graph showing the market shares of iOS and Android since 2009. Tim Page points out on Facebook that it’s interesting that iOS share hasn’t grown; others rushed to point out that iOS users love their apps and use them much more (true – but then, devs don’t prioritise Android and we often get no app at all, or some cut-down nonsense); and that Android phones are cheap and rubbish (there are lots of those, but also lots of premium devices too).